A couple of weeks ago, I received a call from an agent. Vicente, I have this house for you, and you should take a look. I receive the link. I take a look. The ratio rooms: people was 2:1 and I counted the cat as one. “Too big for us”. “Too big? But you can afford it” “That may be true, but it’s too big, we don’t need that space”. The conversation could have ended there, but insistence is too much of a temptation… especially, when you don’t have many prospects. If you thought that the decision...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Most people say: “It’s too small for a PPP.” They’re wrong. In fact, this one might be your best lesson yet. In Eldoret, Kenya, the local government pulled off a PPP for solar-street-lighting. Project size: approx USD 23 million. Yes… 23 million US in a country in Africa… In a PPP! More data: Scope: ~20,000 LED street-lights + around 3 MWp solar + 10 MWh storage. Goal: Replace ageing lighting, reduce cost, save lives, cut emissions. And this is why you should study this PPP Project: 1. Small...
2 days ago • 2 min read
The world is at war. Not sure if you realized it. Take a look. The far left and the far right. Work–life balance. Working hours and retirement. More rights and fewer taxes, or more; housing, precarity and the minimum wage… Pensions; emissions, plastics and manatees. Republic or monarchy. “No immigration” or open borders. Separatism or globalism. Fake news; the killers from one side or the torturers from the other, from this war or the other one… And football, rugby, the Black Friday and a...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Most people think Africa is where PPPs go to die. They’re wrong. It’s where PPPs go to prove whether a government is serious. Senegal was. Early 2000s. Dakar traffic was a nightmare. Congestion so bad the city was losing productivity every hour. Everyone talked about “solutions”. Nobody wanted to pay. Then the government did something unusual for the region: They decided to treat risk like adults. Clear demand analysis. Transparent procurement. A concession contract with actual teeth. And a...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Mega-projects don’t just overrun. They overrun lives. Ask South Africa. Medupi and Kusile were supposed to be the big solution. Two giant coal plants. Massive capex. Enough power to stop load-shedding and unlock growth. On paper? Glorious. In reality? A masterclass in how to blow up trust. Design issues. Rework. Delays measured in years, not months. Costs ballooning into the tens of billions of rand. Every extra year of delay? More load-shedding. More diesel. More businesses dying quietly....
5 days ago • 2 min read
Most governments treat their main airport like a toy.A prestige project.A political trophy.A place to cut ribbons and hire cousins. The perfect picture for LinkedIn. Egos don't get a better chance to shine. Bogotá did that for years.And the result was the "before" picture. Congested terminal.Old infrastructure.Chaos on peak days.And zero money to fix it properly. Then in 2007 they did something different.They gave El Dorado to people who actually had skin in the game... Crazy! A...
6 days ago • 2 min read
Most PPP programs don’t get into trouble because of corruption.Or bad engineers.Or lazy civil servants. Or big-mouthful politicians. They fail because people think risk is a philosophy. Not a number. And this has been a constant in my last PPP project in NZ. Everyone talked about risk. This is too risky, they said... but without numbers. You see... we ended with the highway operator not changing barriers because it was too risky... Anyway... another country that learnt about risk the hard way...
7 days ago • 2 min read
Just in case you did not notice. There are just a few weeks left in 2025. What have you done to hit your goals this year? Better question: what are you doing today to finish strong? Most people go hard on goal-setting in January. They feel motivated for a few weeks, then watch themselves and their team drown in operations for the rest of the year. By March, those goals are buried. And this repeats over and over. You probably set ambitious yearly plans that died in Google Drive. By year-end,...
8 days ago • 1 min read
You feel it when the conversation comes up. Fear. Artificial intelligence. It’ll replace us. It’ll get us into trouble. We should be careful. I’m amused. Especially, when we enter into the combination of robotics and AI. That’s when things start coming interesting. Surgeons, replaced. All doctors, why not. Elon is very supportive of that. Consultants. Caregivers. And so on. Robots and AI will take all jobs. This time is different… Of course! Like the steam machine. Like the automobile. Like...
9 days ago • 1 min read